This time it’s the right one. After a first attempt with Nabilla on Amazon Prime three years ago, canceled after a few days due to the Covid pandemic and border closures, “Love Island” returns to small French screens this Monday. This reality show, which will see eleven heterosexual singles flirting and more so affinities under the sun of Gran Canaria (Spain), will be launched at 11:15 p.m. on M6 and will then settle daily, at 7:50 p.m., in the W9 grid. It will be presented by Delphine Wespiser.
“It’s an important program in the renewal of access to the channel, underlines Jérôme Fouqueray, the general manager of W9. The “Love Island” brand is a global success, particularly in the United Kingdom, and is based on new writing, with candidates with new profiles. This installs a different relationship with the viewers. A way of taking the opposite view of the “Marseillais” put away in the closet to make way for this new show.
“They are almost non-existent on social networks”
“The public is in demand for new faces, different types of candidates, new personalities,” says Pierre-Guillaume Ledan, deputy director general of unencrypted channel programs for the M6 group’s flow programs. So a nurse, a dental surgeon, a high-level footballer and an HR manager, among others, will be among the protagonists of this French “Love Island”. “They all have jobs and are almost non-existent on social networks,” he promises. They were chosen from some 6,500 applications received, but “most were found on the street, the old fashioned way”, through a wild casting. Which is, we are assured, a guarantee of authenticity.
“The eleven bachelors will be reunited in a villa. On the first day, they will choose who they want to pair up with. Over the course of the adventure, other candidates will make their entrance and this will reshuffle the cards, explains producer Matthieu Grelier from ITV Studios France. It’s a popularity contest, he will know how to seduce the public. “A key, a large sum of money that the winner may or may not share with his half.
“There will be no spoilers”
The season will be shot “in real time”, meaning that each daily episode will be a summary of what happened the day before. “There will therefore be no spoilers, underlines Pierre-Guillaume Ledan, which is the scourge of reality shows recorded several months in advance. There, the mechanics are unstoppable, every day something will happen. The channel and the production believe all the more in the involvement of viewers as the public will be encouraged to vote for their favorites, to make connections between single people or to decide who will or will not join the adventure, by expressing themselves. on a dedicated app.
If “Love Island” is presented as quasi-revolutionary, the device is reminiscent of that of the tumultuous first years of reality TV confinement in France, two decades ago. Every day, from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. and from 10 p.m. to midnight, the most curious can connect to the live channel offered on 6Play Max or on Orange channel 85. What to make them forget definitively “The Marseillais”?